Memeorandum

April 13, 2019

Almost Like Journalism

The Times reports on decisions at the DoJ to decline to defend two laws. One is the Affordable Care Act. The other, which apparently has experts divided, involves a technical dispute (what makes this a Federal and not state-level offense? See BACKGROUND below.) about a 1996 ban on female genital mutilation (hard to feel the political wind blowing from the right in favor of overturning that ban, inspired by immigrant behavior, but here we are...)

Sparking my ire is this ahistorical diatribe, my emphasis:

While there are important differences between the two cases — Republicans have attacked the Affordable Care Act in the courts for years, while legal experts are debating whether the circumcision law is defensible — critics were troubled by what they fear is an emerging view inside the Justice Department that it is up to the Trump administration, not members of Congress, to decide whether a law has merit and should be enforced.

“Imagine a world where an administration of one party passes a law and then a different president effectively invalidates it by having the Justice Department refuse to defend it in court,” said Joshua Geltzer, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School.

“You want elected lawmakers to draft laws, not lawyers at the Justice Department,” Mr. Geltzer said.

Wow, to imagine that I'd have to imagine a President explaining he can't act until Congress changes the current law and then imagine that same President reversing himself after the legislative effort stalls and unilaterally instructing the DoJ to simply exercise its prosecutorial discretion and decline to enforce the law. Unthinkable!

Or if that memory is too raw, what about that other Clinton legacy project, the Defense of Marriage Act? The DoJ cut that loose as well in response to a shift in the political winds, that time from the left.

For the Times to pretend even for a second that this is a new problem under Trump is absurd.

BACKGROUND on female genital mutilation issue:

In drafting that law, Congress relied on its power to regulate interstate commerce. Lawmakers had increasingly used that authority to overcome the fact that they cannot simply make local crimes federal matters, no matter how evil, unless they violate some federal power that Congress wields.

“For this to work, Congress has to show that there is some connection between the criminal conduct and interstate commerce,” said Mr. Dellinger, now a partner at the O’Melveny & Myers law firm.

But in 2000, four years after the female circumcision law was enacted, the Supreme Court examined Congress’s use of the Interstate Commerce Act in drafting the Violence Against Women Act. In that case, United States v. Morrison, the government lost in part because the court had greatly narrowed Congress’s ability to use its power over interstate commerce to draft criminal laws.

Last year, in the first court case involving the genital mutilation law, the judge in Michigan cited the Morrison case to rule that Congress had failed to clearly draw a connection between interstate commerce and the practice of female genital mutilation.

In his letter to Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Francisco sent a list of possible changes to the law to strengthen the connection with interstate commerce and keep the ban on female circumcisions in place, like outlawing the use of the banking or telecommunications systems to perform the act.

“Essentially, the Justice Department is urging Congress to fix the law before a case gets to the Supreme Court, where there is a good chance it would be struck down,” Mr. Dellinger said, adding that the government’s action in this case was appropriate. “The constitutional fix is relatively straightforward, and should be uncontroversial.

Nothing is uncontroversial. This will be portrayed by some nutter somewhere as an attempt to attack immigrants and embarrass Ilhan Omar.

Comments

That's ok, BariJerry; I certainly won't dictate what anyone should like. I just toss them out there, usually because it's what I'm listening to at the time, and maybe it will click with someone. If it doesn't that's fine, but thanks for at least giving it a listen.

Don’t remember whether I posted about it from a couple weeks ago, but I rented a brand new E300 Merc for my Front Range excursion. Normally consider Mercs as frumpy from the days when they were the Checker Cab of Yurrup. Anyway, the new beast was extraordinary. Ran from 85-105 mph for about 250 miles. Never a hint of any mediocre behavior. My only bitch was the OL curse of stupid controls of all the dash features. My DIL has a recent Merc SUV, so she could give me a clue of the stoopid whizzing knob functions, although I mostly ignored all that given my earnest desire for speed. Overall mileage for the speedy trip was 25 mpg.

Here are a couple of interesting twist I noted firefly was inspired by Whedon reading the killer angels by shaara, original Walter Koenig was up for an earlier role in Babylon 5 but he fell I'll, speaking of which Michael o hare captain jefftey Sinclair was suffering from mental illness, he had John nash like paranoia and was replaced for that reason, he ultimately passed on in 2013.

Car-wise, it's primary purpose is efficient and inexpensive transportation. My wheels are a 2006 Toyota Matrix I named Red Pill. Red Pill has 162,000 miles and is going strong. I've had it to the dealer twice; once for brake work at 142,000 miles and then again to replace the ECU and air bag (recall).

My most favoritest car was my '89 Honda CR-X which was totaled in a freak accident in '93.

All 6 cars I've owned in this lifetime have been manual transmissions (Hey, MT, is your bird back from the paint shop?), the last three brand new.

I was always suspicious of CBS's quick apology for the 60 Minutes segment Lara Logan did on Benghazi. The show aired on October 27, 2012. On November 8th CBS apologized eventually removing the show from its archives and sending Logan off on a leave of absence. Media matters was given credit for debunking the story.

I think CBS staged the whole thing, allowing Logan to produce the show, all the while knowing they would torpedo it in the end. The CBS apology and repudiation of its own work would put an end to discussions of Obama's and Clinton's responsibility for the deaths of four Americans. The media could then just put all that stuff in the rear view mirror and never look back.

David Rhodes, brother of Obama's close advisor Ben Rhodes, was president of CBS News at the time. So I suspect CBS News planned on the retraction and apology while the 60 Minutes segment was still in production, and I suspect the White House was in on it.

I'd like to be able to contact Lara Logan and ask her if she thought that might be true. I tried a message to an old Facebook page of hers, but I didn't get a response. Really didn't expect one.

MM, that's an oldie and goodie I found a long time ago. I was searching for schadenboner and asking for a friend if girls can have them, and it was there in the collection of images. It fit right in with Clarice's Pieces.

The responses are full of people who think Medicare for All is a swell idea. They have no idea what it means, no idea how insurance companies function, no idea what the National Health Service in Britain is really like. They are ignoramuses.

I was listening to Dan Bongino's podcast and he said the democrats keep saying that private treatment is allowed. However, you are NOT allowed to do so for "emergency treatment." So, if you want to pay for your own nose job or face lift, no problem.
If you need heart surgery or cancer surgery, you have to wait in line.

I assume the exceptions will be for those who are politically connected to the democrats.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "It really feels more like we have a comic book villain in the White House than a President." http://hill.cm/tm9dI48
===================================
The comic book villain is of their creation. They have made no effort to learn what the man is really like because they were all about scaring their voters, and now they have scared themselves.

Another incident of attempted violence against a @TPUSA chapter leader. This amazing young patriot was stalked and almost run over multiple times in a parking lot by a leftist. This needs to stop and media should report these hate incidents!!

I was always suspicious of CBS's quick apology for the 60 Minutes segment Lara Logan did on Benghazi. The show aired on October 27, 2012. On November 8th CBS apologized eventually removing the show from its archives and sending Logan off on a leave of absence. Media matters was given credit for debunking the story.

Nothing says lack of integrity like removing an article from your database and making it unavailable for future discussions. And those clowns get upset at being called fake news.

Finally, getting deep into Strange Curse, but the Masters and the Chelsea game will delay my finish. Very humid here on the First Coast, already 80F on the beach. Looks like ANGC gets the weather around 2:30-3:00, so they may get it in.

hoyden, NO!!! They sent tantalizing pix that show the main paint work is done, but still some inspection needed before putting the foils back on. The rather minor interior tweaks (carpet and glareshield) had not been started. This week is critical because my insurance recurrancy turns into a pumpkin by Friday. Fingers and toes crossed.

Now off to read Pieces and then get ready to send off our Italian friend.

Happy Palm Sunday to all! I sure hope we're not singing all the interminable verses to "Hail Thee, Festival Day" (one of my least favorite hymns, but one dragged out reliably for Palm Sunday as we march about getting out of sync and tune with each other and the organ).

Storm at three???
No way are they going to make it til three. Who's reading their radar???
(It's been such a gift to us IRT to taking the boats out, esp sailing. Though we've made some boo boos--had the scariest trip home of my life two summers ago from my cousin's place three miles across the lake. Thank goodness for the island! I did not want to die by electrocution.)

The "yellow rain" is going to be there by noon. One at the latest.
And there is plenty of red in with all the yellow (the colors on my radar app).

They will stop for lightning or a tornado. Will not halt play for rain only. But that storm coming is not rain only and the winds are already up. The leaders are on 4 & 5 now. Pretty much on time for a 4 hour round which should finish between 1 and 1:30 pm.

The significance of palm Sunday is greater than mere politics the Lord was 'fighting not merely against men, but powers and princes of the air' and he knew this with each sermon to provoked the authorities to greater fury.

If there is a lightning strike w/in 10 miles the warning horn will sound automatically. At least, that is how the thing works at our club. Mandatory 30 minute pause after the last strike.

The daughter's HS state championships were played at Reynold's Plantation in a driving rain storm. They got 3 inches that day. I don't think ANG will allow the course to be abused like that one was with that idiocy. If the rain starts pooling, they will stop play before the lightning detector signals, IMO.

If the Fed had done its job properly, which it has not, the Stock Market would have been up 5000 to 10,000 additional points, and GDP would have been well over 4% instead of 3%...with almost no inflation. Quantitative tightening was a killer, should have done the exact opposite!

Just woke up after about five hours of interrupted sleep. Yup - it's a mean muncher of a storm headed directly to the Augusta azalea factory. I have two of the world's most pampered hot pink Encores leading out to the water, and the more exposed twin looks like it got stomped on by Godzilla... Sad!

Atlanta radar shows the rain in Macon/Milledgeville now, less than 100 miles from ANG. No way it makes it to 3 pm. The embedded red line of storms is breaking up as it travels across the metro area, but storms tend to reform as they travel across lake country.

Well, Steph, you know Georgia better than I do. All I am relying on is the Weather Channel's radar for Augusta, that I linked above. I hit the future button and it keeps showing the storm getting there between 2:30 and 3:00 but then that channel has been wrong before, like our hurricane Michael.

The heck of it is that none of that made a dent in the news, Clarice. They are still out there and it seems, getting even more vicious. Omer calls 9/11 "a thing" and Crenshaw gets blasted. They really are disgusting. And now New York and New Jersey are pushing physician assisted suicide. Let's start with Cuomo.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was on last night and I couldn't resist.

I may tune in the Masters if only to see Bishop Pickering miss a putt. (special narciso clue).